US – Trump Rejects UN Global Compact on Migrants and Refugees, Grassroots Migrants Will Determine Their Own Future International Migrants Day 2017

Two weeks before International Migrants Day, December 18th, 2017, the Trump administration announced that it will no longer participate in the UN Global Compact on Migrants (GCM) and refugees (GCR) declaring that the UN’s “approach is simply not compatible with US sovereignty” and that “decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone.” Hypocritically, the US has never respected the sovereignty and self-determination of other nations, including displaced indigenous peoples within its own borders, causing many of the economic, political, and environmental disasters driving the global crisis of forced migration.

The Global Compact on Migration is the UN’s latest response to the current migration and refugee crisis. The GCM acknowledges the “mass movement of peoples” worldwide, around 300 million displaced peoples, the highest since the last World War. While the global compact falls short of addressing the root causes of the forced migration of millions of refugees due to war, political violence, militarization, state repression, and economic crises, the United States’ most recent position on the matter demonstrates its complete disregard for accountability or compliance with international processes. At the same time, it is the driving force behind many of the crises in the world today.

The Trump administration has expanded and intensified fascist and racist repression against peoples and movements across the U.S., along its own borders, and extended these attacks to home countries as well. While recklessly war-mongering against China, North Korea, and the Middle East, Trump continues the U.S.’s neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation, and liberalization. He and other competing imperialist countries are impoverishing, forcibly displacing, and devastating peoples and their homelands.

With slow growth and declining world trade, US imperialist policies under Trump are squeezing workers for lower wages, through flexible work and contractualization, relying more and more on informal, irregular workers. These economic attacks on working people and the exploitation of migrants require the political repression of workers, communities of color, and migrants who are left to fend for themselves, and we have seen Trump openly attack any resistance or advocacy for migrants’ rights. In his withdrawal from the UN GCM process, we note his particular arrogance, insisting on all the rights of an imperialist America first, while avoiding any and all accountability to international norms or laws on the rights of migrants and refugees.

Domestically, in less than a year in office, Trump intensified the exploitation of migrant guest workers by expanding the H2B guest worker visa programs for the benefit of US corporations. He has opened the door for his administration to become the “trafficker in chief,” since recruiters, placement agencies, and employers exploit the desperation of economically forced migrants. At the same time he has excluded other migrant and refugee populations, whom he has alternately labeled as terrorists, animals, drug smugglers, and rapists. His policies represent some of the most inhumane anti-migrant policies recently, none of which resolve the U.S’s underlying and worsening economic crisis since 2008. The number of deportations has ballooned under the Trump administration, and he has shifted from the “deporter-in-chief” Obama’s strategy to now indiscriminately target and collaterally sweep all undocumented immigrants into his deportation net (not just those with violent records as priority).

Even more openly, Trump’s xenophobia and repressive policies signal the desperate reaction of the 1% to cling to power. Trump has also promised or attempted to:

-Build a wall on the Mexican border and multiply the number of deportations, militarizing the border, terrorizing families and communities, and enhancing the powers of the security state.-Implement 3 versions of a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and temporary suspension of the entry of refugees, discriminatorily shutting the country’s doors to the world, and

-Repeal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and eliminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nicaragua ending in January 2018 and Haiti in July 22, 2019 with decisions pending on El Salvador and Honduras, instantly adding tens of thousands of forced migrants and refugees in the U.S. to the community of millions undocumented.

With the rise of right wing, racist and fascist governments and movements in the US and Western Europe, people everywhere including migrants and refugees are building resistance and struggle against these reactionary forces. IMA-USA calls on all of its members and grassroots migrants groups to join us, as we build a more powerful migrant and refugee movement across the United States and join oppressed people throughout the world to stand up against this declining US imperialist system and to build a better world for all.

The ultimate solution for the welfare and wellbeing of the hundreds of millions of forced migrants and refugees will not come from UN heads of state or policy makers and big NGO’s, but from the migrants and refugees themselves. Contrary to the GCM framework that promotes “safe, orderly, and regular” migration for the interests of businesses and corporations, this International Migrants Day, migrants and refugees around the world will continue to rise up to demand justice, to fight for their homelands, and to stand against the rising fascism, xenophobia, and repression they face both at home and abroad. IMA-USA will mobilize on International Migrants Day and invites all who struggle for justice for migrants and refugees to join IMA on December 18th, 2017 and internationally in September 2018 at the 8th International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees – IAMR8 in NYC to determine the people’s demands in the UN’s Global Compacts on Migrants and Refugees. Migrants are organizing, and the mass movement is strengthening itself around the world. Join us in our calls: